Contested Links between the Knights of Labor and Las Gorras Blancas

Background: The fence-cutting protests by Las Gorras Blancas or the White Caps, a group of subsistence farmers in the late nineteenth-century San Miguel County, New Mexico, drew angry responses from New Mexican politicians as well as the large cattle ranchers. The local officials and some pro-union workers blamed the Knights of Labor for organizing Las Gorras Blancas although the local chapters of the Knights denied any connections.

Honest Labor Speaks

White Cap Outrages Perpetrated Under Cover of the So-Called Knights of Labor—Real Labor Revolts

Correspondence New Mexican
Rowe, San Miguel County, N.M., Oct. 30 — In the light of recent occurrences here, the claim made by the so-called Knights of Labor agitators in San Miguel and Santa Fe counties that there is absolutely no connection whatever between their organization and that gang of organized outlaws, commonly known as White Caps, does not appear to be well founded.

Now, every honest man respects honest labor, and he recognizes it to be the duty of honest labor to organize (within the ample limits of American law) for self-protection and the general welfare of the laboring men; but every conscientious citizen must deeply regret that the worthy ends of labor organization should be so shamefully abused, so degraded, so unjustly imposed upon by the set of irresponsible and unscrupulous men (many of them known to be candidates for office) who under the cover of the Knights of Labor charters supplied by T.V. Powderly, grand master workman, are engaged in organized lawless bands of White Caps. It is an insult that every honest laboring man should resent, and it ought not to be difficult to secure thousands of signatures among he real laborers of New Mexico to a petition asking the national council of the Knights of Labor to revoke the charters for subordinate lodges lately granted in San Miguel, Mora, and Santa Fe counties. Deserving and earnest laboring men in New Mexico owe it to themselves to start this movement, for unless they throttle this White Cap monster it will surely in the end reflect upon them, as it is plain the White Caps do their devilry under the Knights of Labor banner.

I wish in this connection to state a fact that shows the connection the White Caps have with the Knights of Labor, so-called. At the time Laub’s store was burned here recently Wm. Koskolowski, an old and well known citizen, who had been induced to join the Rowe branch of the Knights of Labor, not knowing it to have any connections with the White Caps, made the remark: “To hell with the White Caps!” At the next meeting of the K. of L. lodge, so called, Mr. Koskolowski was surprised to find himself taken to task for making this remark, and it is a fact that he was formally tried, convicted and sentenced to pay a heavy fine. This in a so-called K. of L. lodge. Mr. Koskolowski refused to pay the fine and has declined to have further connection with the outfit. These are facts. Can honest labor afford to have its bright escutcheon smirched by association with these vicious White Caps?

A Workingman.

Source: Santa Fe Daily New Mexican, October 31, 1890.